Origami Shinobi
by Kuro Guardian
Summary: All that night he fluttered through a thousand shapes until he had the one most wanted in his toy village a perfect shinobi. From the Stories Not Told to Children Collection.


Once there was a picture, a picture perfect family and maybe for a time the picture perfect family was happy. In the picture perfect family was a mommy who pretended she'd only ever wanted to be a mommy, and a daddy who only ever wanted to be acknowledged and two little boys who didn't want anything except to want something of their own. This picture is special because there are only three copies - one left to moulder in a blood-stained necropolis no one remembers, one folded away tightly in the shrinking place where an oni keeps his heart, and the last one lays in the inner most pocket of an origami shinobi named Itachi.

Itachi didn't used to be that way - once he was a blank page that used to be a wet bundle of cloth his mother stirred and strained until he laid newly made. He'd been a beautiful sort of shimmery lavender-indigo that only grew darker and more iridescent the older he got. His mother loved the prettiness of him and longed to keep him mostly plain with maybe a few stray thoughts scribbled round the edges because they're so important; but the tin-plated clan said he was too brilliant to be wasted like that and his father wanted to be clever and acknowledged so they snatched up her lovely sort of lavender-indigo son. Snatched him up and began to fold, but they were clumsy as most tin men are and more importantly they went about it wrong.

So wrong in fact that the sheet-son pulled itself away from their grasp, so violently he nearly tore himself, and began to fold himself - so well in fact that all the previous fault lines and wrinkles failed to show and everyone was pleased especially him. So pleased was he that he went to show his mother. Patiently she smiled her pride and briefly glanced at him while her thread-bare hands carefully, cautiously tried to strain a second son - a son who was a charming sort of summer sky/ ocean green fusion.

And the little origami lad was confused? Yes, confused not angry or sad or hurt because little origami children don't feel like that. No, he was confused because surely he was a fine enough son that she didn't need another. 'Still', he thought,' perhaps I have only to fold myself sharper, tighter, better to gain her attention.' And that very night he unfolded like a puzzle box. All that night like the wind in the eves he fluttered through a thousand shapes until he had the one most wanted in his toy village - a perfect shinobi. Everyone seemed most impresssed, even the Hyuuga dolls with their hard glass eyes, but still when he floated down the long hallways to his mother's lair she only smiles her centre focused on her precious Sasuke - still flat and mostly blank, but for a heart drawn in the center and a long line of I love yous circling the edges of the page. Spiteful he wanted to say that hearts don't look that way, Instead he went away to show how a paper man burns without burning.

Eventually if he still could he might have laughed because Mother's precious Sasuke-sheet was caught in his wake. Fluttering by and about him begging for attention the heart in it's center mockingly blatant, but the origami shinobi had neither time nor energy and besides he hated the little shimmery sheet made of the cloth of her mother's hopes. His mother's hopes all pretty colors that no one, but he and his blasted mother had eyes to see. Not that it mattered because he was better then that now having made himself too sharp to be handled - an elegant origami katana. 'Because', he told himself in the whisper silence no one else understood after how his mother had cut him again, ' shinobi are only ever human and humans got hurt got cut..' Humans got cut and healed if badly, but paper doesn't work as such and he didn't want to die so, so he folded himself into a kantana sharp enough not only to cut down the wax soldiers he'd decided most men to be, but to cut through the witchcraft his mother wove. To cut through himself and his almost cloth brother.

And if the first causality happened to be a wax man named Shisui so what? So what if the wax man is supposed to be his friend, his best friend? Paper men don't bleed, swords don't bleed, tools don't bleed and Mother never noticed. Too busy she stood between the wind and her one son - her son not Itachi. If he noticed anything after he stained himself darker with the familiar blood it is that Mother's hands are white, white and her hair and eyes are dark, dark and her mouth is red, red.

White and black and red so that he wondered for the life of him from what marvelous piece of paper was she made? What careful sensitive hands had crafted her only to leave her to the terror of tin soldier men? And if he watched her unfold for the cold cast-iron Father and longed for nothing more then to cut him - well what of it? Were not swords made to cut and cut?

So one day it was no surprise to himself at least - that that's what he did. He watched her as he has always watched her as she bends beneath his father's clumsy hands and then he left and cut down card soldiers, lead soldiers, and porcelain masks until he thought that surely he had to be blunted by now (surely they had to have runned out by now). Only then does he go back to a mostly silent house only to find them together and her breasts are round and pale, pale while her nipples are pink, pink nearly as much as the place where he spires Father's prick which is thick, thick. He is careful to clean them and rearrange them making sure to briefly touch her lips. When he is finished he unfolds and refolds into a long, curving chain of barbed wire. Then he waits for his brother.

The delight he takes in mutilating his foolish little brother's paper heart is overshadowed only by the joy he feels in sliding through the night on four clever legs as his own namesake. He wonders when if ever his brother will washed the blood staining him. He doesn't think so without mother's lovely pale hands to carefully strain and press her darling son back together. Strangely he remembers her hands on Sasuke's face and both are so very, very pale. He doesn't stop running until the blue paper moon sinks from the sky and the golden sun lamp is hung up high in the sky. He folds into the katana he's been for so long and that is all that matters for a time.

When he is alone he will unfold himself and ponder upon the family in the picture he hides inside. This is a risk for him because his lines aren't what they used to be so much so he finds it difficult to fold himself into the sharp-edged things of before, even with the aid of Kisame. No matter his memory is good and his battered body remembers the ways of a shinobi, well-enough for him to mange it and if the edges are a little crooked so be it, it'll work well enough.


End file.
